Learning how to properly play AST

[Nekotee]

Yes because drk skill forbid all external mana regen

Less for him more for the heal \o/

[Leigaon]

Every BLM work with their mana pool, they know when to transpose/flare or any of their skill they work with their mana limitation
You give them more mp, they will be temps to use one more spell and everything will be ruined (loss of enochian wrong thunder timing)
The only thing they do love is arrow that allow them a greater spell management or balance stronger DPS

I have been asking questions from the jobs like crazy to better understand. It seems that basically they are dedicated to that rotation and really I was told they just ignore it if the refresh is given to them and continue to do their normal rotation.

...I will go with I understand and leave it at that for the black mages, they do get arrow though when I see it benefits them. Still I kept doing dungeons and reached 35 where I can now play with Royal Road.

I've created Macros and I've learned a lot. First half don't know if we put it on them outside of raiding. Secondly most don't even know what the cards do. All they know is that it should be on them because they were told so. Some do notice when I use a card due to the animation, sometimes I will admit I am healing / esuna / or might be in DPS mode too long and they'll mention I have not used a card in a while. A while being 15 seconds or so past the actual CD, which is a lot in this game.

This is making me create a royal road macro to let people know I've taken time to put the card back in and what the next buff will do. This is unnecessary micro managing, but I enjoy that. I got voice commands for my tank lol

I am so far enjoying the job...in this job communication is by far helping me do things and letting other users know what's going on. Some will react, some will do nothing. I do see there are a few flaws and hope that S.E. fixes them.

I do not like how the spear doesn't reduce cool downs already activated, it seems best used for pre-pulling. Spear and Ewer I can see being used mostly for the RR, or I have started casting it on myself then activating lightspeed for some speedy heals / MP management.

I love our first regen based spell. It's a bit shorter but I feel it's an instant heal that also makes up for the few ticks I get as WHM. Plus normally as a WHM I will regen a troubled player such as a DPS and want to make sure they get in a safe range so I'll maybe throw in a cure if I see they have a history of being in danger of dying. That cure is usually too big and lets the regen go to waste, this AST one though is perfect.

[Nekotee]

If you had the patience to create the 24 macro for your card
Then I admire you XD

Spear do reduced CD that have been activited... But it only work on the overall cooldown...
So if the CD is already 25% refresh the spear is useless.
Which is... 98% of the time (well maybe it make you gain 2/3 second on draw or essentiel dignity... But merely useless..)

Ultimately
The best card is balance it benefit everyone except full healer (would be fun to have balance enhanced pour heal from 10%)
Arrow work best for Blm and smn. Mnk, nin, brd, drg will like it but it will burn their TP. Tank and heal will be... "Meeeh"
Bole work for tank enhanced or long it always good
Ewer on heal or bard, smn won't mind too, Blm will dislike it
The spire, every physical will appreciate that, mnk, nin and drg first. Brd and mch if they aoe, tank if they go wild. Useless on EVERY caster XD

[Rongway]

So far the healing is fine but maybe that changes later?

It does change...it gets better. With Synastry, if you heal someone other than the synaster, the total potency of Benefic is 400 * 1.2 * 1.4 = 672; you're basically splitting a cheaper Benefic II unevenly between two people. And then as mentioned previously, once you have Collective Unconscious, you have the option to put up a triple regen that heals almost as much as a Benefic every three seconds.

Stuff about cards

More stuff about cards

It's nice that you took the time to make macros, but it's not really necessary. If people are so focused on what they're doing that they don't notice the buff flytext or buff panel, they won't notice the /p notification (or worse, notice it and get distracted).

For the people who do notice, behavior change while buffed will be minimal, with the exception of a decently timed Spear, where someone might decide to activate a support ability a few seconds earlier than he would have otherwise. And aside from that, most people will just do what they would have been doing anyway; so the only person whose behavior is significantly dictated by the cards is the AST using them.

As for Royal Road and Shuffle, sure, some cards aren't as desirable as others, but keep in mind that if you Shuffle-cancel or Royal Road-Royal Road or Draw-cancel too often, you're losing a lot of potential buff-person-seconds. If there isn't a very specific, difficult phase that you're saving a very specific combo for, you might as well just use some of the cards that you initially want to throw away, just to avoid going two minutes without actually playing any cards at all.

[NamoNanamo]

stuff about healer

Don't forget that healer dps too.
So arrow and Balance is still useful. And Arrow can help when everybody need some heal.

Spear do NOT reduced CD that have been activited... But it only work on the overall Spear...
So if the CD is used, the spear is useless.
Which is... most of the time if you don't know their cd

Better, I tested it with Swiftcast and it doesn't reduce his cd if you used it before Spear.

[Leigaon]

If you had the patience to create the 24 macro for your card
Then I admire you XD

Spear do reduced CD that have been activited... But it only work on the overall cooldown...
So if the CD is already 25% refresh the spear is useless.
Which is... 98% of the time (well maybe it make you gain 2/3 second on draw or essentiel dignity... But merely useless..)

That might explain why I didn't notice it. So it is doing it but just that it already went past the point. That's good to know.

Lol not at 24 yet, but I keep them general, letting the users know a general idea of what's happening..and being maybe too optimistic for my own good hopefully they can figure the extra details out themselves.

Better, I tested it with Swiftcast and it doesn't reduce his cd if you used it before Spear.

Would it be too powerful if they made it a reduction of anything casting + what's remaining on the cool down? Otherwise I was trying to use it on PLD pre-pull. They pop a few things anyways, so the macro can help at least warn them. It's a 50/50 shot..

skidoosh!

Synastry sounds a bit like a SCH fairy but not independent. Which sounds fun!

Yes the macros are mostly for me, and those who care to. That's just me though, I mean I let people know when I use benediction. That's just because I work IRL in an environment that is mainly focused on letting everyone know what's happening.

I just unlocked lv35 this morning so I'm excited to see what I will do. I enjoy the buffing aspect a lot

[Marianno]

Thank you everyone for your feedback on how I can be a better healer in my AST job. I have been trying out everything and I have seen some improvements :-)

[FoxyAreku]

snip

Half of their abilities are related to card buffs, which hurts their ability to keep up in throughput.
Again...worst is not the same as bad. Astro is worse than both scholar and white mage in both healing throughput and damage done. This doesn't mean that they aren't fine for all the content currently in the game, at all. I'm not sure what we're even debating anymore, nor how I can spell this out for you any further. Compare an AST healing numbers to the numbers capable by the other two jobs and AST will always come out last, I'll number crunch for you if that's what you're wanting.
Also for scholar-you forgot succor, emergency tactics, lustrate, indom, Embrace, Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, and dissipation. Cooldowns and oGCDs count, since AST has a ridiculous low amount of them related to healing (Essential Dignity and Synastry are about it, you can maybe count lightspeed too if you're feeling lenient).

Aetherflow and Energy Drain also makes a scholar's mana management a lot easier and more reliable than an astrologian.

snip

I guess what I asked of you was too hard. ;P Oh well.

[AzureFlare]

Stuff

Don't. Really, go ahead and number crunch, but you'll never get a spreadsheet consistent with a fight unless it is like.. Faust 2.0 or something. And AST ogcd/cooldown isn't 'ridiculously low', they are on par with WHM. What is low is the amount of healing AST can do directly through OGCD/ability (WHM Assize/Tetra/Bene vs AST Essential Dignity vs SCH Lustrate).
Most people forget Celestial Opposition becomes powerful the moment you get to combo it into your other abilities, but this has the innate weakness of blowing all your abilities just for potency, the same way you'll almost never see a situation where you need to stack PoM and DS as a WHM. CO 'can' be a 300 potency heal if you combo it in CU (80 per target for A.Helios), almost rivaling Assize. It 'can' be giving you extra Benefic 2s worth of mana (Lightspeed combo), it 'can' give you more single target potency (Synastry/Aspected Benefic). The same way Time Dilation 'can' give you 5 Aspected Benefic, 5 Aspected Helios and 5 CU ticks, which is a total of 1650 potency (rivaling Lustrate potency-wise when all 3 Aetherflow are spent on it).

But that requires the Astrologian to have both a need for those combos and be in Diurnal, on top of coordinating to pull them off. If all those 'can's don't show the exact reason people tend to prefer WHM over AST still, I don't know what else.
AST vs SCH is a non-debate because SCH is the best pseudo-DPS/Healer hybrid of the three. You only need them for burst/mitigation checks and otherwise a SCH is just a DPS with an easier rotation and lower output.

[Nekotee]

Crap i was thinking how to answer foxy...
But azure got it all before me XD

I second the statement
I was healing with a whm who stuff it with as much high piece as he can
While I got the unfortunate experience of switching main (SCH then AST after 3.07) so my eso were split between them

My AST had like 4/5 ilevel différence with the whm
And I was able to heal more than him
And after test my spell were stronger than his (cure vs benefic)
And I was diurnal

...

@Namo

Yeah true... The arrow isgrzat for healer too
Balance only for a SCH in full DPS
But won't use it on a whm if there is better DPS inthe group

And yeah it work on all cooldown before and after the card
But cooldown must be use only a few sec before/after the card
If there is 30sec left on swiftcast CD the spear won't work
60 * 0.8 = 48 sec